Darrell Issa: Health site may top $1 billion

Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday said he believes the troubled HealthCare.gov website will cost taxpayers more than $1 billion before it is fully operational.

“The fact is, eventually they’ll get this website working, at the cost of probably over a billion dollars,” Issa, chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer. “They’re probably closer to $700 million now and they’re going to spend a lot more doing the hard parts on the back end.”

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Last month, POLITICO reported that top administration tech officials remained unsure how much the website repairs might cost, in the end, but the total expense for the site by mid-November had already hit $600 million.

“[T]here’s no question this site is going to get more and more expensive. Perhaps they’ll try to push back some of the cost to the vendors, who failed so miserably, but there’s no question: this is going to be extremely expensive,” Issa added.

While critical of the website’s rollout itself, Issa insisted that HealthCare.gov is not the biggest problem with the Affordable Care Act.

“The real question though is, does the Affordable Care Act work?” Issa said. “In fact, this market is not working because government cannot mandate lower prices.”